Is Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing Coming out on Top? A Comparison with Activity-Based Costing in the Health Field

The cost of health is a recurrent topic that has generated much research, as it affects all of society. Both public and private agents need to know the real cost of treatments, services, and products for decision-making. This article aims to compare the use and research impact of two cost systems widely used in health: ABC and TDABC, which is an evolution of ABC. For doing so, a bibliometric review in Scopus and Medline was carried out encompassing the years 2009–2019. The results show a great increase in publications using TDABC, while publications on ABC stabilized. On the other hand, the TDABC articles presented higher research impacts in traditional and alternative metrics. Articles on TDABC are more frequently cited, published in better journals, and more visible in academic social networks. The findings suggest that scholars and practitioners should focus on TDABC rather than ABC for addressing cost in health for its simplicity, projection, and research opportunities.